First Content for Vodafone live! CAST

Vodafone K.K. today announced the launch of content for Vodafone live! CAST, an automatic content delivery service scheduled to begin with the mid-March 2006 roll out of two new compatible 3G handsets, the Vodafone 904T by Toshiba and the Vodafone 804N by NEC. The visual mobile magazine “yubio” will debut as the first available content offering. “AkibaRun!” and “chu*rara” are scheduled to follow later in March. Yubio (based on a play on words using the Japanese word for thumb, which is oya-yubi) is a visual mobile magazine that readers can quickly flick through with their thumbs and targeted at males from 25 to 35 years of age. Yubio aims to be a visually oriented all-round entertainment magazine with set themes for each day of the week. Each issue, delivered daily, will have approximately 15 pages.

“AkibaRun!” features up-to-the-minute information on products hitting the stores and other items of interest from Akihabara, the world-famous Mecca for manga, anime, figurines and other Japanese pop culture products. Experts on different genres will also introduce best-buy items in their columns. Each issue, delivered daily, will have approximately 20-30 pages.

“chu*rara” is targeted at females from 14 to 20 years of age and features information on “gal culture” (fashion, make up, social circles, etc.) and events originating from Shibuya, Tokyo’s trend-setting entertainment district. Utilising a daily format, chu*rara aims to help form reader communities by offering sections for Sha-mail and other types of submissions and chances for readers to become models in the pages of the magazine. Each issue, delivered daily, will have approximately 20-30 pages.

Japan Mobile Communications Inc. (J-MOBILE) is developing the mobile magazines listed above and Vodafone K.K. will present them. To meet the diverse needs of customers, Vodafone K.K. plans to offer an even richer selection of mobile magazines in the future. Vodafone live! CAST aims to provide a new style of mobile media that enables customers to enjoy the content they want to read, whenever and wherever they want to read it, delivered every morning directly to their handsets.